Maybe the North American announcement will get a Nintendo Direct of its very own. Maybe Nintendo realizes that now is the time to bring EarthBound back, and it’s already concocted a plan to bring EarthBound back through Virtual Console, and just doesn't want to squander it in a 30-cent promotion when they know they could make a small fortune at full price. Now, I might be thinking about this the wrong way. Not that I blame them-if I’d been denied the chance to play one of the most legendary RPGs of the 16-bit era, I’d be raising a ruckus, too.

Chances are good that many of the players demanding to see EarthBound on Virtual Console have never even played the original Super NES version, but are caught up in the mystique. Ironically, Nintendo’s lack of attention to the series has made fan support only grow, and the property has practically reached mythical status. The emotionally powerful Mother 3 was famously denied North American release as well. Though the Super NES release was not a big hit (140,000 copies sold according to Wikipedia), Nintendo of America could have given the franchise a new life-and realized gamers' hopes and dreams in the process-during the Game Boy Advance era with the release of Mother 1 & 2, but it didn't happen. Of course, the drama doesn't only involve the Virtual Console version of EarthBound. I’m pretty sure that even when I asked for, say, the most-wanted Genesis game, EarthBound still actually got the highest number of votes, although I had to disqualify it for not being a Genesis game. Support was so unwavering that I quickly had to modify the poll on a monthly basis to focus on different game systems or different genres, lest we be stuck with the same results issue after issue. For a time we polled readers on their most-wanted Virtual Console games, and EarthBound was constantly the most-wanted title, with the original Mother not far behind. You don’t have to look too far to see bustling communities at sites like EarthBound Central or, and when I was an editor at Nintendo Power, it was impossible to miss the constant outpouring of fan support. Still, it’s hard to imagine that the financial incentive isn’t there.

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